The immediate prospect looked dark enough to make me consider the advisability of the long detour to the town of Mezquitic, to get assistance from the government authorities there and to enter the Huichol country from the east by way of Santa Catarina.  Against this plan, however, my men urged that they could not be back in their country before the wet season set in, to attend to their fields.  Finally, I decided to risk going to San Andres.  If Don Zeferino was not there, I would come back and then try Mezquitic.  Two days later, after a laborious ascent, I sent my chief packer ahead to San Andres, which was still about eight miles off.  What a mountainous country all around us!  The Jesuit father Ortega was right when he said of the Sierra del Nayarit:  “It is so wild and frightful to behold that its ruggedness, even more than the arrows of its warlike inhabitants, took away the courage of the conquerors, because not only did the ridges and valleys appear inaccessible, but the extended range of towering mountain peaks confused even the eye.”

My messenger returned after two days, saying that Don Zeferino was at home and would be at my disposal.  In the meantime it had begun to rain; my men were anxious to return home to the valley, and I started for San Andres.

END OF VOL.  I.

NOTES

[1] I have used once or twice the expression gentile Indians, referring to these Tarahumares.

[2] Several years after my expedition passed through those regions the Apaches on more than one occasion attacked outlying Mormon ranches and killed several persons.

[3] See page 356.

[4] With which the fruit is brought down.

[5] The Rio Fuerte, the only large water-course in the Tarahumare country, empties into the Pacific Ocean.

[6] As related by an old “Christian” Tarahumare woman in Huerachic, on the upper Rio Fuerte.

[7] A kind of tomato.